Conversations are at the heart of what it means to be human.
– Theodore Zeldin

Steve McCurry Photography

I found this photograph from my favorite photographer Steve McCurry who became famous when the portrait of “The Afghan Girl” was published in National Geographics in 1985.

This is a photo of Tibet and another amazing series of photos he has taken, on what it means “To be Human“.

The Afghan Girl by Steve McCurry

“The Afghan Girl” Photograph by Steve McCurry of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan woman of Pashtun ethnicity born 1972. “Gula was orphaned during the Soviet Union’s bombing of Afghanistan and sent to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984. Her village was attacked by Soviet helicopter gunships sometime in the early 1980s. The Soviet strike killed her parents – forcing her, her siblings and grandmother to hike over the mountains to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan.

Although her name was not known, her picture, titled “Afghan Girl”, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named “the most recognized photograph” in the history of the magazine.”

I highly recommend the documentary that aired in 2002 “Search for the Afghan Girl”.

17 years later, A Life Revealed. An Excerpt: “Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. “She’s had a hard life,” said McCurry. “So many here share her story.” Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.” Read the Story at National Geographics.

You can purchase some of his art on Artsy.

Will Afghanistan ever see peace?